


Stargate: The Path to Infinity (old version)

by Plutofix



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Ancient!Harry, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 03:02:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Plutofix/pseuds/Plutofix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end of Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter have accidentally traveled 40mln years back in time and met with Ancients as they started their expansion into the Universe. Follow his adventures as he goes through the time to face his destiny.</p><p><b>AN</b>: This story is posted here as an archive of an early version. It is being rewritten and it will be posted later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Mirror of Erised

**Crossover** : Stargate SG-1 / Harry Potter

**Categories** : AU / Timetravel

**Description** : In the end of Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter have accidentally traveled 40mlns year back in time and met Ancients as they start their expansion into the Universe. Follow his adventures as he goes through the time to face his destiny. Ancient Harry, Immortal Harry.

**Disclaimer** : All rights belong to their respective owners. I don't own nor Harry Potter and neither Stargate. However, the story itself is mine.

**AN** : I apologize for a) some inconsistencies in writing style (English is second language for me) and b) mess-up with chapters, I am still getting used to how this whole publishing on works.

* * *

**Chapter 1**

( **extract** : Harry Potter and Sorcerer's Stone)

It was Quirrell.

"You!" - gasped Harry.

Quirrell smiled. His face wasn't twitching at all.

"Me," he said calmly. "I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here, Potter."

...

* * *

_\- Use the boy... Use the boy..._

Harry Potter was horrified more than he ever was before, not even Uncle Vernon in the moment of the most purple-faced rage has given him that much fear. The whisper which answered to professor Quirrell had seemingly come from professor himself. But it wasn't professor. No, the voice was different, it was not human. A voice from the nightmares. Weakly, Harry has walked towards the mirror and stared at his pale and scared looking reflection. Suddenly, the reflection Harry smiled at him. It put its hand into its pocket and pulled out a blood-red stone. It winked and put the stone back in its pocket — and as it did so, Harry felt something heavy drop into his real pocket. He has somehow gotten the stone.

"Well?" - asked Quirrell impatiently. - "What do you see?"

And at that moment Harry suddenly understood it clearly and without a doubt that whatever he would be telling next would decide his life.. or death. Here he was - finally out of Dursleys house, at Hogwarts, whole new world, magical world at that, the world his own parents belonged to, as opposed to what Aunt Petunia told to him about them, the world where he could have friends, yes, definitely friends, and hobbies, and study without the fear of his cousin Dudley's bullying, and have fun and play games - like the usual person, and not be a freak.. But he stood in front of a dark wizard, who was going to kill him as soon as he got the stone, and then.. then everything would be finished. And as the realization of the situation he was in hit him Harry suddenly wished it all gone. With all his power he wished to be away, away from Dursleys and their household chores, away from the magical world and the dark wizards, pompous pureblood bigots like Malfoy and sadistic teachers like Snape.

And the mirror reacted. It was its purpose after all to show the deepest heart desires. The image in the mirror has flickered and changed to show some other place. As Harry was continuing to wish to get away his magic flared and visibly exploded out of him. The wave has encountered the mirror on its way and ripples went all around its surface, and then a loud cracking sound rang through the room. Rippling in the mirror has intensified and then another wave of magic flew, this time originating from the mirror. Harry felt the hot sensation on his leg, where the pocket containing the Stone was, and briefly wondered if the Stone has somehow reacted to the magic before he felt himself pulled into the mirror.

Quirrell, flung aside by the wave of magic, though startled by the sudden and rather volatile magical reaction, nevertheless reacted fast, as fast as he could... but not fast enough. He has managed point his hand in direction of Harry and snap his fingers with intent to freeze Harry and stop him from whatever he was doing, but it was too late as the boy was already in the process of getting away.

The spell cast by Quirrell has connected with the magic of the transportation right before Harry disappeared. The last thing he remembered was the absolute rage on the face of professor, and he thought it was funny how much trouble Quirrell was in by failing to complete the task of his master once again. And then there was nothing.

Lord Voldemort has risen from his position near the wall, controlling the body of Quirrell and started cursing everything in his sight in rage. Explosions rocked the dungeons, blobs of acid started to eat away at the walls and parts of ceiling started to fall down. One of the spells destroyed the mirror of Erised, which has resulted in a shower of glass shards. The block of stone right above Quirrell's body has started falling down and Voldemort raised his face to look at it. Red eyes have glowed maliciously as the Dark Lord fled the castle in his spirit form, leaving the crushed body of his failure of a servant behind. The Stone was lost to him and he had nothing of interest in Hogwarts anymore, especially with Dumbledore already on his way. No, he had to retreat and make other plans for coming back.

* * *

Slowly the darkness retreated and white ceiling came into the view. Reluctantly waking up Harry tried to feel around for his glasses on the nightstand. Failing to find them and failing to find nightstand itself as well, Harry puzzled about where exactly he was while groggily sitting up. It wasn't his bed at Gryffindor dormitories proven by the fact that the nightstand on which he kept his glasses was not nearby, and neither was it the Hospital Wing, or else Madam Pomfrey would already be bustling around asking how he was and checking herself without waiting for answer.

Blinking several times Harry looked around and noticed he was in unknown room which aside of the bed he was sleeping on was bare of any furniture. And then the memories of events prior to his unconscious state appeared in his head. Immediately his hand went to his pocket and to his surprise he felt the Stone lying in there. Taking the Stone out of the pocket Harry stared at it captivated by the depth of colors as the rays of light entered the stone.

By itself a memory of conversation sprang in his mind – Hermione frantically flipping through the pages of a huge tome and finally finding what she was looking for.

"Nicolas Flamel", - she paused dramatically, - "is the only known maker of the Sorcerer's Stone!"

Harry chuckled slightly remembering the looks he and Ron gave her at that point.

"Oh, honestly, don't you two read? The ancient study of alchemy is concerned with making the Sorcerer's Stone, a legendary substance with astonishing powers. The stone will transform any metal into pure gold. It also produces the Elixir of Life, which will make the drinker immortal."

Feeling awe at holding the legendary artifact in his hands his thoughts wondered on the possibilities of having the Sorcerer's stone in his life. But then he snapped out of those thoughts as he remembered exactly what gold riches would bring to him – more fame. Harry hated being famous and having the constant attention wherever he went to or whatever he did, even if he wasn't doing anything spectacular at the moment. Plus, the Stone wasn't even his, it belonged to Nicolas Flamel and he needed to return the artifact to its true owner.

This thought however brought Harry out of reverie. He placed the stone back in the pocket and glanced up just in time to see the door opening. A man and a woman have entered the room talking between themselves in some strange language Harry did not recognize. They appeared to be glad he was awake as they proceeded to ask him multitude of questions. At least he thought those were questions as he didn't understand even one word of what they were saying.

"Excuse me, please." – he tried to make them understand that he didn't know their language. – "My name is Harry, Harry Potter. I am very grateful that you took care of me while I was unconscious but I don't understand a word of what you are saying."

The couple looked startled at the sound of English and stopped asking him questions, or what he assumed were questions. They conversed quietly between each other and then looked at him expectantly.

"My name is Harry." – he tried again pointing at himself. – "Harry Potter."

They seemed to understand that. Woman has pointed at him and said – "Harry?"

He nodded. – "Yes, I am Harry."

The pair exchanged glances and smiled at him encouragingly.

* * *

It took him several months to learn some of the language those people spoke in. At first it was very hard and frustrating to be unable to explain what he wanted to say to them by using only gestures. However, gradually he was able to pick up on some words and phrases, and using them start to communicate with his minders. It helped a bit that some words sounded similar to the Latin, not that Harry knew a lot of Latin, but he did study in Hogwarts for one year.

Talking with Gayana and Toren he found out that he was not in Scotland, England or any other place he knew about. And, apparently, no one in here knew those places as well – which baffled him to no end, because frankly – even for magical world it would be strange to end up in some place you never heard of, where no one ever heard about where you come from. Harry managed to find out that he appeared suddenly and unexpectedly from what they called Astria Porta. He didn't know what it was but his level of language did not allow him to ask or understand more details, and so he resolved to learn about it at a later time.

His days were spent in learning the language with Gayana, as well as trying to help Gayana to cook (she was shocked to find out how good he was and how fast he learned her recipes), learning to use various devices from Toren and getting to know the culture of the people. It was another thing that eluded him – these people had incredible level of technology, technology which was far ahead of anything he ever seen or heard of in his life. And, at the same time they were clearly magical – he has once seen Gayana healing the cut Toren accidentally made while cooking by a simple touch and concentration.

It was very often that he was found cursing himself for not learning more of magic at Hogwarts, for lazing around with Ron instead of reading more of magic that could be potentially useful... useful like in situation he was in. He resolved to take his education more serious now and was putting all his effort into his best at everything, always trying to learn more, asking questions, sometimes stupid to the great amusement and satisfaction of both Gayana and Toren.

Of course, Harry missed his friends and wondered what was happening to them and how they took his disappearance. But the difficulty of what he was learning, as well as shear amount of it took all his concentration every day all day long, until he would fall asleep in the evening. He thought that he really needed to learn fast to be able to understand what happened to him, and what to do next.

And so, it was to his great relief around one year later that he finally passed the last of the tests given to him on the language knowledge. He was feeling a deep sense of satisfaction by having achieved good results within only one year, considering that at the beginning of said year he was only able to guess meaning of some words and communicated by gestures and mimicking.

That day when they had a dinner Harry wore a constant smile on his face, which did not seem to escape attention of his surrogate family (yes, about 3 months ago he finally accepted the fact that those people who cared for him and spent so much time and effort to help him were like a family – after which they had a very important talk with both Gayana and Toren which ended with them "adopting" him). The reason of that smile was a promise made by Toren that as soon as Harry have successfully learned the language he would be allowed to talk to the Council (the ruling body of those people) about himself and his arrival to this place, as well as his future standing in this society.

It was mentioned sometime before that the scientists have determined the particulars of his arrival and assured him that returning back was difficult if not impossible process, but explanation of the details was postponed until he could reasonable understand it. Not that Harry minded – of course, he was interested in what happened to him and getting back home, but – he was having a new home here, in this place with these people. And also between his everyday lessons and spending time with a group of people his age that he befriended in the few past months – it has been taking all his time.

The next day Harry was schedule to meet with Council and finally find answers for many questions that plagued his mind. He was preparing for that meeting for a long time by now and had constructed a list of questions he had for them. But preparing for the meeting and actually being ready for it are different things, so he was reasonably nervous as the time went on. Finally, with his eyes closing and mind drifting to sleep Harry Potter wondered how many changes the next day would bring into his life.


	2. The Council

**Chapter 2**

Council Hall was a large circular room with 8 consoles even placed around the circle and open space area in the middle with concentric rings pattern on the floor. All eight consoles were being operated by the Council members. The ninth place was currently occupied by Harry, with Gayana and Toren standing right behind him by the same method as himself - visual projection. As Harry woke up in the morning and had a breakfast he found out that they didn't need to actually travel somewhere to meet with the Council. Instead they have utilized a special room, which contained communication platforms. They just had to step on one to join the meeting in this virtual form. The meeting hasn't started yet due to some last minute preparations. And so, Toren was using the time to quietly explain to Harry various things about the Council.

"Harry, the Council represents our people and as such it consists of three factions with each part represented by two positions: Life, Defense and Science. Aside of emergency situations, the members to represent all three factions are chosen by their knowledge and skill in relation to the case which is going to be discussed. There is also the Head of the Council and Advisor. The task of the Council's Head is to coordinate this meeting and lead it. Head Councilor is generally chosen for their wisdom. Advisor is a random member of our society and their role is to provide an opinion about the subject of discussion."

"Harry may wonder why so few people are gathered to solve the problems." - Gayana added and Toren nodded. - "The answer is simple. As you already know by now, our people are not big in number, but what you don't know is why. How to explain? I'd say that in some way we, everyone here, are kind of runaways of our home galaxy."

Harry raised his brows at this statement. Runaways? These people? Really?

Seeing the disbelieving look on his face Toren continued, - "We fled our home due to ideological conflict with the rest of our race. The reason of the conflict is an attitude our race started to exhibit towards the other races. You see the knowledge of the Universe we possess is simply enormous, as we have been developing for 10 million years. In all our history we have never met a race that would be at level of anything even a little bit close to us in understanding the Universe and its inner workings. We have on several occasions attempted to speed up the development of others…" - here a grimace of something like pain or regret has crossed his face. – "And suffice to say it did not go well."

"What happened?" – wondered Harry.

It was Gayana who answered him. - "We don't like to talk about it, as it is our greatest mistake and shame. We have learned our lessons and we have rules for no interference to the lives of other races now, but back then we did not know the lengths of any individual would go, craving for power. We could have prevented catastrophes, but we were blind," – she shook her head. - "The races we have given technology to... they have started wars of domination between themselves, and they destroyed themselves. In one case even obliterated the entire star system, which with shifted gravity affected another system nearby, the inhabited planet was pulled out of orbit and was frozen," – she kept a grim silence for few moments. – "They were an advanced and very peaceful civilization, incredibly attuned to the nature of their world, which was filled with great forests and lakes."

"We have managed to save a few thousand of inhabitants." – Toren continued as Gayana snorted sarcastically. – "Out of several billions. (Pause) Some of them joined us in our trip here, but they have lost a lot, and in their suffering they have shrunk to the shadows of their former selves. You might encounter them later on. If you do - please don't increase their pain. Our first stop in this galaxy was not on this world. In fact, we came here to this world because it is much more beautiful and calm than Dakara, and we hoped they would be able to resurface from depression in here."

"Their world was part of them, on a very deep level" – life has returned to Gayana's eyes and excitement filled her next words, – "for some reason, which we didn't manage to discover as we didn't want to invade their privacy without their permission" (Harry nodded in understanding), - "their world itself was alive. You see, Harry, the whole planet was alive and in symbiosis with Alfars. It was fascinating when we discovered them and studied of their culture. Imagine how it is to walk the halls of their Nexus – temples of Nature, and what you feel when you participate in rituals to share emotions with the Great Trees… we had hope for them to become our close friends," – she finished weakly.

Toren put a hand on her shoulder calming her and reassuring. Harry was silent, contemplating and digesting what he heard. To even think of that situation, he couldn't imagine it, how was it to know that you were responsible, even if indirectly, but still responsible - for terrible conflict and for deaths of entire civilizations.

"It was after Alfar catastrophe that the true division began" – Toren became serious and concentrated, staring somewhere far away, – "The faction in the Great Council formed and then forced a motion to declare that "lesser" races were to be prevented from reaching advanced stages to avoid catastrophes on this level," – he paused, visibly forcing himself to continue, – "by force if necessary."

"No!" – Harry was horrified by the revelation. – "But it is not right... They deserve the chance to …"

"Yes, Harry, we know", - Toren smiled to him reassuringly and continued. - " _Oriors_ , _the result of_ , have quickly gained agreement of many. As Alfars were liked by many of our race, the anger resulting of their demise has clouded the judgment of our people. And it was then that we have decided that we needed to leave. We believed in free will, which any race has a right to exhibit. Instead, we decided to not interfere. The Oriors, however, pushed for enslavement."

"We did not share the views of Ori. We are indeed far older then any other race we've encountered, and we are very knowledgable. But we are not omnipotent. We believed strongly that we should not interfere with other races. And so we left our home galaxy and home world – the world where our civilization has been growing for many millennia," – here he has paused seemingly reminiscing something of his past, but then continued. - "And we traveled the space very far, far farther than we ever had before, and we reached his galaxy – our new home. In memory of this perhaps longest travel we have called our new place _A-Via-Lon_ , which is a short form for _A-Via-Lon-Domos_."

" _Long road from home_ …" - Harry automatically translated, trying to figure why the feeling of something important was playing hide-and-seek at the borders of his memory. Toren's and Gayana's smiles at Harry's demonstration of knowledge of the language were full of pride.

Toren ruffled Harry's hair back in the communication room, which gave him quite a comical look and brought a wide grin on his face.

"Impressive indeed, Harry Potter", – the voice came from a tall blonde man standing across the circle to them in a circle, who then smiled at him. – "Your success in learning of our language is evident and your efforts to do it as fast as you did are commendable."

Harry looked up and noticed that apparently the Council was now ready, meaning that the meeting has already started and Council was patiently waiting until things were explained to him. He blushed slightly from the fact that all the Council members were looking at him.

"Greetings, Harry Potter. The Council welcomes you. I am Malinor, Supreme Commander of our Fleet and Head of this Council. In the circle next to you is Voran, Commander of all defenses here on Terra, Lenar, Commander of Dakara base, Morag, Overseer of Science division, Fess, his assistant, Dores and Inglarius – the Life department Head and assistant, and, finally, Arno - who is the Head of Healers."

Harry nodded to each member of Council respectively as they were introduced.

"In this meeting we will discuss the events that lead to your abrupt and sudden arrival to our base here on Terra, some of circumstances of which have demanded this Council to consist of the leaders of our society. We will also discuss your current situation and future." – Harry nodded in understanding and agreement, Malinor looked at Voran, an attractive brunette who gave off that special sense of respect and following orders. – "Voran, please lets begin."

Voran nodded and pushed several buttons on her console, after which a screen of sorts appeared in the center of the room displaying a large chamber with a strange circular structure in the center.

"Here you can see the recordings of our surveillance logs from two years ago. An unexpected wormhole connected with the Stargate on our base and spitted out our guest," –image showed the circle suddenly filling with grayish light, before forming a surface. Harry dumbly recognized his own body flying out of portal at high speed and hitting the floor. He was looking in shock, noticing absentmindedly how he was discovered, found to be injured by the fall and spirited away to the healing chambers.

"We have found the guest to be in very bad condition," - Arno continued the tale switching the video to another one, and pointing at some of the numbers, –" medical scanners showed severe depletion of organism's resources and resulting susceptibility towards any infection. We had to keep the body in stasis around six months, until we managed to figure out how to restore the body and bring him out without endangering his life."

"What we could not understand, despite the numerous tests performed, and until the science department brought forth the analysis of the wormhole made from logs, was how Harry managed to possess a DNA very close to our own without us knowing who he was or where he came from." - Arno coughed then stared at Harry hard. - "You gave us quite a fright, young man. Although highly improbable, we had a theory that you were somehow sent through a wormhole from our home galaxy."

Harry looked at him startled in realization. If he was in the place of those people, running away from some very powerful enemies, and thought that said enemies were somehow able to find him… he licked his suddenly very dry lips. The possibility of... not waking up from that stasis…

"Fortunately, the logs contained enough of recording for us to recognize a special energy pattern that accompanied the incoming wormhole." – Marog in turn has brought up the screen filled with some other figures and notes. There was an energy graph in the middle of it and the video was replayed at a very slow pace with graph changing to represent current moment in time. – "Please pay attention to the end of the graph, right the moment before the wormhole stabilized." – The end of the graph zoomed in and shocking explanations sounded from all members present.

The grip of Toren's hands on Harry's shoulders suddenly became stronger. Gayana gasped in shock along with the rest of them and suddenly gave Harry a hug.

"What is it?" – Harry asked out, worried. – "What is this energy signature? What is different about it?"

Malinor looked at Morag and he seemed to understand without words.

"We have checked, re-checked and triple checked it out. We have made as many tests with the data as we could, every single piece of evidence confirms it. There is no doubt. It's true."

Toren turned Harry to look him at the face.

"Harry, our people have encountered this energy pattern before, long time ago. We know what it is and suffice to say we don't like it." - Toren raised a hand in stopping gesture, not allowing Harry to interrupt his explanation with questions. - "Harry, you know by now some of the principles behind the wormhole travel. If you remember it basically connects two points in space by warping the distance in higher dimension. This energy pattern is an addendum, which was discovered shortly after the discovery of process of wormholes creation - long time ago, very long time ago. By its nature, wormhole warps the space dimension… and in order to achieve that wormhole utilizes one another dimension."

Suddenly understanding of what Toren was trying to say flashed in Harry's brain.

"A dimension other than Space that wormhole would be able to use..."

"You have traveled through time, Harry. Around 40 million years give or take few millennia." – Morag confirmed his guess. – "In our society time travel is banned. In short, there were numerous complications resulting to this technology's use when it was first discovered, and a law has been made to never mess with the time."

"We made a hypothesis that you are one of our descendants in 40 million years, which would answer the question about your DNA." – continued Arno smiling. – "Given that fact of time travel we have sanctioned to use a device on you which have basically read an entirety of your memories from your brain. We apologize for that invasion of your privacy, but we had to make sure of the intentions behind this instance of usage of banned technology."

Harry has nodded stupidly at that fact. It didn't matter too much, these people were quite honest and he learned to trust them enough in the past year – ever since he started to understand the language. He was still busy trying to comprehend his time travel experience. 40 million years was no kid thing, it was mind boggling, impossible, incredible… Briefly, Harry wondered why all things impossible happened to him – like surviving the supposedly unstoppable Killing Curse and travelling to the past...

Voran manipulated her console a little bit and suddenly the Council Hall disappeared around them, replaced by the cozy decorated room. Harry looked at astonishment at the room's furniture recognizing it for ones back on Earth. Several unpacked boxes were lying around, which meant that owners have recently moved in, and probably didn't have time to unpack.

Voran smiled apologetically at Harry and explained further.

"This is a fragment of your memory that you are not consciously aware of. Among the memories of your early life it is one of the most prominent, meaning that you have long forgotten about it, but if you tried absolutely you would find it among the first. As we did. We have studied it in great detail and it started us on a way of understanding of the events that sent you here."

Screams, shouts and explosion sounds arrived from outside the room doors. Harry noticed a red headed woman closing the door in fear and barricading it with a chair. She was carrying a baby. The woman run towards the baby crib standing in the corner and for some reason took out some plushy toy. Then she appeared to be concentrating as she has closed her eyes and stood still. Few seconds later she opened her eyes and her fear seemed to increase. Frantically she started to add more boxes to the barricade. However, it proved to be useless as the door flew open, chair and boxes sent flying aside.

A figure dressed in black cloak has entered the room, a piece of wood in the hand – Harry gasped as he recognized it for what it was - a wand. Familiar red eyes maliciously shone with power in the shadows under the hood of the cloak. The woman quickly put the baby into the crib and stood in front, throwing her arms wide as if trying to prevent figure to access it.

"Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl…stand aside now."

"Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead…"

"This is my last warning…"

"Not Harry! Please …have mercy…have mercy…Not Harry! Not Harry! Please… I'll do anything"

"Stand aside. Stand aside, girl!"

With horror realization of the situation started to seep into Harry. The baby… it was him in there, lying in the crib. And the woman… was his mother… and the memory – it was his memory of when Voldemort attacked and killed his parents in their house...

\- **Avada Kedavra**!

Green light flashed around the room and woman dropped on the floor, dead. The figure pointed the wand at the baby's face and Harry suddenly had an urge to touch the scar on his forehead. At this moment the speed of video playing seemed to slow down considerably and as everyone was watching the tip of the wand glowed green, then a beam of green light separated from it and flew through air and struck the baby's forehead. As it connected a strange white energy spiked from the baby and hit the figure. Even in the slowed down memory the attack was very fast, barely a blink of eye and the roar of energy passing by was gone. The cloak and wand fell down to the floor. The memory faded and gold decorated walls of Council Hall came back to view.

Harry did not know what to do, his thoughts were racing, jumping from one thing to another without a stop. Malinor seemed to pick up on that and declared the meeting adjourned for the period of three hours for everyone to have chance to assimilate the information, and prepare for further discussions. Harry nodded thankfully to Malinor and stepped away from the platform.

"I will be near the waterfall," - he told to the worried Gayana and Toren, and run away.

Waterfall was his favorite spot, he discovered a little piece of paradise some time ago and used it for when he needed to concentrate. At this moment however he just needed a place to be alone, feel miserable and down, grieve... for he has just witnessed the deaths of his parents and wanted to be away.

"I will go after him, a bit later on. Give him time", - Toren stopped Gayana who wanted, no, needed to follow the boy. He held her close to himself, in a hug of sort, preventing her from going after Harry and trying to calm down the raging volcano of maternal instincts.

"He is just a child, youngling. He should not have faced this! They should not have shown it to him! It was not right!"

Toren has narrowed his eyes at that.

"Yes, I will have words with Malinor and Voran about it. This should have been handled differently. They know better."

"Will he be ok? Toren, tell me he is going to be ok after this." - the clung to him for answer, at which point he smiled at here reassuringly and kissed. - "Of course, he will. Harry is strong in mind. You know him to be so as well, Gayana. You know his spirit. Just give him some time and he will come back."

And the pair stood looking in the direction in which Harry Potter has fled.

* * *

 

Ripples run across the surface of the pond from where the jumping stone touched it, intersected with other ripples and died down facing the waves which originated from the falling water. Harry launched another stone and traced it jumping five times before finally submerging with unique plop sound. His gaze lingered for few moments on the water where the stone disappeared to trying to keep track of the drowning stone, but it disappeared within the shadows.

He was sitting on the log of the tree and from time to time tossing the stones in parallel to the water surface, sometimes trying to get more hops, sometimes just throwing them without care. Absentmindedly, he noted that the clouds in the sky above him were white as feathers and that the sky itself was of an incredibly beautiful shade of blue, and then he threw away that thought to concentrate on matters at hand... which he for some reason could not even formulate.

Vision of the death of his parents affected him deeply. It was one thing to know that your parents were murdered by the most feared dark lord in the history, and it another thing completely to witness the event itself, even if displayed in the memory playback. What was he supposed to feel? He was definitely sad, as he watched and now remembered clearly that his parents were dead and he was raised with his relatives family, very angry at the kind of unfair life in which a dark lord would aim to kill his parents and to kill him, confused about what would prompt the said dark lord to target him specifically, he was a 1 year old after all, how could he warrant to be a threat, but most of all, and he himself was very shocked about his reaction, he was serenely calm.

As if nothing happened, although it did happen. As if that what happened bore no significance to him, although it really was very important. His thoughts and feelings were rushing in all directions, shapes, colors and what not. A total chaos of thoughts in the most chaotic multi-dimensional way the human mind could be at. But all of this chaos was in the background, below the very strange and on so many levels disturbing sense of calm and nothingness. He had to force himself to think about something in particular, otherwise, he was feeling himself going mad with all the other thoughts raising from background and demanding to be thought of by him at the same time. Idly, he thought that this state of calmness could be in the essence of the highest level of chaos possible, and what would it mean for the study of the human mind, but that thought was squashed away as well.

Harry decided he had to do something, busy himself with doing something, or else this strange state of his mind would be unbearable to him. So, he took another stone and launched it across the water surface. It was better than sitting and thinking things, at least that way he could concentrate on getting more jumps from the stone – a completely physical activity.

Two hours later Toren found him sitting on the same spot deep in thought. He carefully approached Harry and finally stopped a few steps away.

"So…" – he started – "got any better?"

Harry looked at him, before smiling and answering – "Sure. Let's go back?"

"Of course" – Toren smiled and offered him a hand, and then pulled Harry to his feet when it was accepted.

They went back without talking about anything, because there was no need for words. Gayana was waiting for them near the communication room, and when they approached she gave Harry a big hug, which he returned a little bit awkwardly but reassuringly to her. They used the platforms and returned to the Chamber room.

The Council was waiting for them. Voran started to say something but Harry raised his hand stopping her.

"You have no need to apologize. If anything, I should be grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to see my parents, even if the memory itself was not pleasant."

Harry turned to look at the Malinor. – "I am sorry, let us continue the meeting."

"You have nothing to be sorry about." – Malinor smiled at Harry's words, and nodded to Voran. – "Let's continue".

Over the next few hours they have been watching the key memories from his past as selected by Voran. They have briefly gone over the memories of him growing up in Dursley household, where Voran noticed for everyone about some of the specifics of the society he was living in (Gayana and Toren were appalled at Dursleys for their misconduct towards Harry). Then came the first memory of magical world – the mail owls' episode and arrival of Hagrid. Voran stopped the memory at the moment where Dudley has grown a pig tail to apparent amusement of everyone present. Some figures appeared in the air again and the Council seemed to be interested with them. It turned out that the spell to grow a tail had an energy signature quite similar to some technology the Council knew about. They discussed it shortly, before moving forward.

His arrival to Hogwarts and the memory of Sorting Hat, first classes on the Transfiguration and Professor McGonaggal's ability to turn into the cat at will, Potions and ability of certain ingredients to give interesting effects, the spells at the Defense against the Dark Arts, flying lesson with Madam Hooch, brooms and Remembrall device – many things were processed and analyzed by the Council. They were quite intrigued by such an interesting assortment of various magical things and their effects, as well as what analysis could be generated from the memory.

In the end they reached to the memory of the Sorcerer's Stone and mentioning of Nicolas Flamel by Hermione.

_"There have been many reports of the Sorcerer's Stone over the centuries, but the only Stone currently in existence belongs to Mr. Nicolas Flamel, the noted alchemist and opera lover. Mr. Flamel, who celebrated his six hundred and sixty-fifth birthday last year, enjoys a quiet life in Devon with his wife, Perenelle (six hundred and fifty-eight)."_

At this the memory stopped and Voran looked around to see the faces of everyone present.

"Quite an interesting device it is, this Sorcerer's Stone." – she looked at Harry – "I believe that it is currently in your possession, Harry Potter."

Fess has shifted forward a bit and spoke the first time since the meeting continued. - "What is curious is that we could not fully understand how this stone functions, and neither could we fully replicate its effects."

"This Sorcerer's Stone appears to be capable of producing Life energy, which then proceeds to heal the user's body on the cellular level, so to say 'renewing' each individual cell and restoring it. And so, the age does not affect the user of the device. " - continued Morag, - "The problem with recreating the stone is that its structure is in the constant change and motion. The individual parts of which the stone consists of restructure themselves in a continuous manner on the atomic level, and so the resulting waves of energy produced by the stone are also changed… which we have a hypothesis is the reason of highest encountered effectiveness of the created healing effect." – he paused a bit and continued explanation – "Each different wave of life energy affects the user on atomic level. Some waves create changes which are dangerous to the health, but within a number of the next few waves will come another wave that counteracts negative effects and stabilizes the body again. Tracking the changes made by each individual wave proved to be impossible. We were also unable to figure out the patterns of structural change, and we predict that we will be unable to fully recreate the stone at the current level of our knowledge, unless some in-depth research will be done in the area of life energies for the next few centuries. I regret to say it, but our knowledge is simply insufficient."

Silence took hold of the Council chamber. Ten millions of evolution and development provided these people with enormous amount of accumulated knowledge and the bold statement about their temporal of course but still inability to accomplish something were a little bit unnerving.

Voran continued. – "Our understanding is that the technological level of the society Harry Potter comes from is much higher than that of when the stone was created and much lower than our own level…" – she looked at Malinor, then at Harry, then at the rest of the Council. – "which poses a question of how the artifact could be created in the first place."

"Anyways, moving forward," – Fess started talking again, and used his own console to display schematics to what looked a cub of some sort. – "We have managed to record a sequence of wave patterns and reproduce them using this device. We estimate that the recorded sequence has a significant healing power."

"But due to its incomplete balance it has to be used sparingly and only for short periods of time, or else unknown yet problems may arise." – Arno interrupted the scientist quickly. – "The usage of device, if configured properly" – he gave Fess and Morag a glare that conveyed the two his intent to make sure they would create a better version of the device before attempting to test it again. – "will improve on our healing systems."

Malinor looked at Harry and bowed – "It seems that our people owe you a gratitude for allowing us to study this artifact."

Harry's cheeks flushed red at this statement, seeing all Council members bowing to him was too much.

Voran looked around the Chamber and then proceeded to put them into the memory playback again. – "These are the last set of memories we will be watching today. We will provide you with the rest of the memories data, so that you can see it at your convenience, Harry." –she held out a crystal. – "In here, you will find some memories of your parents that you had in your childhood." – she smiled. – "I believe that you will be glad to see them. Gayana and Toren will show you how to watch those memories later on."

The surroundings changed to that of the room where the Mirror of Erised was originally located at. Council members looked with interest how Harry appeared from under Invisibility Cloak and saw his parents and other family members in the mirror, then appearance of Professor Dumbledore and explanation of mirrors functions. Then the memories changed to play the challenges and defenses of the Stone and how Harry along with Ron and Hermione passed them on their way to prevent the theft of the Stone. Harry had a small laugh at Hermione's mishap about looking for wood to make fire.

In the end the confrontation with Quirrell, who was possessed by Voldemort, came in to play. They watched the confrontation and saw that reacting to Harry's wish to escape the mirror changed to show another place. Harry suddenly recognized that place as a park nearby Surrey, where he used to hide from Dudley and his gang and reasoned that he could probably unconsciously think of it as a safe place for himself. The wave of magic that exited Harry has interacted with the mirror and its surface changed into something which reminded them of the surface of wormhole in the connected Stargate, and Harry was starting to be pulled into it in slow motion. As the wave came back reflected from the mirror, a brief flash of light shone through the material his trousers pocket, where Harry knew the stone was in. A wave of magic coming from the Quirrell approached the disappearing Harry, and then the memory ended.

"This Voldemort is a truly vile creature" – mentioned Lenar, to the agreeing nods of Voran and Malinor.

"There are two moments which will be important for the further part of this meeting" – Voran grew serious and proceeded to explain. – "First, is the nature of the last spell used by Quirrell, which as we saw connected with the portal just before Harry here disappeared into it."

Morag activated his console to display the spell and its specifics. – "Our analysis shows that this magic is temporarily slowing down the time of its target", - he looked at Harry – "when combined with the portal-like structure of the mirror, you were sent into the past. If to put it simple, the energy of the spell affected the transmission and instead of simply going to the place which was shown in the mirror you went to this place and 40 million years back in time. The energy required for the transportation was partially provided by unique qualities of the stone artifact, which I remind you is highly unpredictable and constantly changing…"

Everyone looked at Harry and he looked back questioningly as he did not understand why they looked at him after these words.

Malinor sighed and related to Harry – "It means we are unable to send you back into your own time, because we are unsure of exactly what is required to establish such a connection through time. You see, Harry, the area of time travel is explored insignificantly, as in our race it is prohibited to meddle with time. And, although this case is very unique and could have warranted an exclusion from some of the rules we have, we cannot allow this particular law to be broken."

Harry nodded slowly. He wanted to get back to his own time and meet with his friends again, but he was but a guest in this place and would not demand things these people were not willing to do.

"Do not be disappointed, Harry Potter" - Arno suddenly broke the mood. – "Your journey might be long and filled with many events, but eventually you will be able to reach your own time."

At the questioning look Arno pointed at Morag to explain.

"This is related to the second important issue about the process of your arrival here." – Morag obliged. – "As you could see, the Stone reacted and in fact facilitated the transfer of you through time and to us." – he paused and looked at Harry directly to the eyes. – "It also appears that some of the Stone energy patterns found their way into your body while you were decomposed into molecules and gathered again."

Harry blinked at the scientists, not understanding his point. Arno continued very excited in his intonations – "You see Harry, it is my theory, but I believe it to be most likely true, that, to put it simple, you are for all intents and purposes immortal, as in – unable to die."

Harry looked dumbly at the smiling Healer as if wondering if he was crazy. – "I am … what?"

"It requires to be proven, of course" – added Fess. – "But generally speaking, we think you will be able to affect the energy patterns in your body and keep yourself at the age you want to be in. The possibility of this happening is of course so small that no one would ever believe it, yet here you are, and all the readings we do and all the analysis supports this idea."

Dores and Inglarius, the representatives of the Life department, started talking for the first time in the meeting. - "If this proves to be true, then given your consent, your role and position among our people might become very important."

"What do you mean?" – questioned Harry still disbelieving the absurdity of the situation, and their claim that he could live… forever.

"Well, think of it, our people are knowledgeable, and our life span is considerably high" – Dores pointed at Malinor. – "Our Supreme Fleet Commander for example is over 2,000 years old, one of the oldest and most experienced among our people." – Harry looked at the man, stunned by revelation. Malinor nodded in confirmation.

"Yet you, Harry, will live much longer than that" – continued Inglarius. – "If you read one page from the book per day, you will still become the most wise and experienced person among us within several thousand years."

"Given this" – continued Dores, not giving Harry any chance to protest the unimaginable idea that he could be the wisest among these people – "you will without a doubt hold an important position and high power among us, or to be exact – our descendants. And that means that we have to create a program of your training…"

"So, that the day when you take one of the leading positions of our race" - Malinor smiled encouragingly at Harry - "you would be prepared."

"Wait a moment," – Harry finally had enough of that non-sense – "How can you trust me with responsibilities of holding some important position? I am not … I cannot be worthy for that…"

He was stopped by Gayana, who embraced him in a hug to calm hyperventilating teen down. – "Hush, Harry, they are not speaking about now. And, you can of course ignore it, but you did learn our language exceptionally fast and you were very successful in your studies of basics of our science with Toren. In time, if the Head Healer is correct in his belief, you will become very knowledgeable and skilled."

She looked him into the eyes, and he was stopped cold, stunned beyond any measure at how much truthfulness he could read from here. – "I will believe in you Harry Potter, and when you grow up, I will be very proud of you."

"As will I"- joined Toren to the last declaration. – "You will not be alone in this." – at that Harry bit down the tears that were ready to spill from his eyes.

Toren suddenly laughed and slapped Harry on the back. – "and think of it, you get to learn all about the various stuff we know and have... Want to pilot a ship in the open space somewhere along the lines?"

Harry Potter smiled brightly after that. At this point he did not know of what future was holding in for him, but he knew one thing for sure – he had the support of people very dear to him, and the future was looking bright.


	3. Chapter 3

Within a few years since the fateful council meeting Harry achieved significant progress on his education. As his new family and their people have fully committed to accept and raise him as one of their own, opening to him all the doors, treating him as one of them and withholding nothing, he reciprocated the feeling, building unrelenting motivation to succeed and not disappoint anyone of his numerous tutors. He has understood perfectly clear that Alterans (that was the name of the race of his hosts) did not offer him familial ties, knowledge or anything else out of greed, nor did they pursue any goals of using him in his unique situation - everything he was given, he was given freely, no strings attached. It was in their way to acknowledge him as one of their own, and the least he could do was to return the favor.

Harry has discovered that he had a natural talent to succeed in everything he applied himself to. And applied himself he did. He no longer had to hide his intelligence in fear of retribution from Dursley family, and within the nurturing environment created by the love of his adopted family and sincere well-wishing of many others - he found himself flourishing. Under the watchful eyes of Gayana and Toren he has trained his body, mind and soul, reaching his limits, overcoming them and setting new ones.

One of the many things he was taught amongst other things like sciences was a complete history of the Alteran race - all ten million years of evolution, including development of their culture and society, important events precluding the birth of various philosophies and ideologies, raise and fall of empires. It was important to know the past and learn from its mistakes - to know where one comes from, and how he comes to the current point of time. Later, Harry would understand how important those lessons were, as they made it possible for him truly become one with his family. If he went without the history background, he would be often questioning the reasons behind the various decisions people around him made, and would never truly understand the great race of beings he became a part of.

Learning history also became a training of the mind for him due to unique way the history was taught - after all a history of a ten million years old race is bound to be profoundly impressive and impossible to cover even in several lifetimes, unless special methods were applied. The way Alterans achieved the solutions was quite ingenious - they were all masters of their own minds, and in a special ceremony between a student and a teacher some memories could be shared. The follow up discussion of that particular fragment of history shared for the lesson would clear up any questions and misunderstandings, at which point Harry would proceed to some other lesson, allowing the knowledge to be absorbed. As it was explained, that particular method of sharing was most commonly used by mothers to teach the children, and in any other case required a lot of trust between giver and receiver of memories, because in its essence it was a limited form of soul union. As such Harry was cautioned against doing it with someone else by himself until a later time when he would reach the necessary control to perform the sharing.

After the morning lessons Harry would often spend some time in deep meditation, as it helped him tremendously to better understand himself and utilize his new-found knowledge or abilities. Finding his true balance proved elusive at first, and he had to battle a lot of inner demons, but eventually he has managed to achieve the calmness and reveal his soul - his true self. That particular success, made under the guidance and with a lot of help from Gayana, allowed Harry to become order of magnitude better with centering himself, utilizing his magic and thought processing. He no longer was in conflict with himself, did not doubt his worth or anything of the sort. It was a very gratifying feeling to be free, free of doubts and problems he wasn't even aware of, but worked his way through.

An additional after-benefit of meditation was that his body would become highly energized and he could more efficiently train in Alteran marital arts, taught to him by Torren. The first few months his stamina and overall physical health were a very frustrating problem, but with time he improved and healthy diet allowed his body to recover from most, if not all, effects of growing up in Dursley household. He even started to build up some muscles and growing in height from his rather small size. Speaking of Dursleys, all the time Harry spent running and dodging his cousin Dudley seemed to make him a little bit more agile than a usual boy his age, which proved to be a positive thing when some of the movements introduced by Toren demanded him to have an absolute control of his body to be executed properly.

Of course, the most favorite part of the studies for Harry was learning how to control Alteran technology, in particular – flying various vessels in a simulated virtual reality. It wasn't easy to reach the certain level of proficiency in his studies, control of magical abilities and physical state before Malinor, Supreme Commander of Alteran fleet, even considered him adequate to start training in operating ships. After all, with Alteran people just recently arriving to the new home resources for the construction of ships were scarce, and each ship had a long list of planned operations - as such, there was little time for real training time for new pilots.

The virtual reality technology was simply amazing though. Every Alteran ship aside of manual control interfaces was capable of being directly controlled by using only a mind connection. In a simulated environment which provided input for all 5 senses Harry has been instructed in every step of the operations of various ships – transports, exploration vessels and even military battleships. The sheer feeling of freedom he experienced every time he was executing various loops at extreme velocities, coming to complete stops and charging away again at breakneck speeds was overwhelming – there were no troubles, no anything, just him and his ship, every single small part of which he could control to operate at maximum efficiency and feel how perfectly everything worked.

At some point of the training to fly Alteran ships, Malinor overtook the instruction and started Harry in battle simulations. If Harry ever felt like he was a good pilot – that notion went right out of the window in the first few minutes of the new simulation. It was a glorified obstacle race with a set of insane requirements for speed of the ship, direction changing, firing weapons, lowering and raising shields and many more operations. At many points the pilot was required to simultaneously make a complete stop, fir of at ten or more targets with precision, initiate scanning and then immediately chase after the target enemy vessel while avoiding every single enemy hit, which were coming in small bursts of fire ahead of his trajectory – so he had to stop every few hundred milliseconds and then continue. After failing twenty times in the first ten seconds of simulation Harry blew up and declared the simulation impossible to complete, after which he was bluntly told that the particular ship he was using for simulation could be operated in required fashion, and had to pick his jaw from the floor after seeing Malinor proceed to complete the mission on the first try.

Exiting the simulation Malinor had a short laugh at the expression on Harry's face, and then informed young pilot that such a level of control would come to him after many years of dedicated training, and that it was required of a pilot to have that proficiency with every vessel in the military fleet in order to become Fleet Commander. The following simulations were not as "crazy" – he had to win a battle one on one against a similar ship, or participate in maneuvering with dozens of other ships.

Months later when the novelty of the flight expired a little and Harry has reached acceptable levels of ship control Malinor suddenly offered Harry a challenge. Harry was to fight Malinor in identical ships and win the battle within a certain time limit, or at least not be destroyed by the time the simulation expired. They had an insane flight, which ranged across hundreds of thousands kilometers with lots of weapon firing exchanges, and Harry even started to have some fun playing the game of cat and mouse against the more experienced pilot. After a short break, Malinor instructed **A** I to control another two ships and aid Harry in his battle – at first Harry thought that the numerical advantage would compensate the lack of flight experience he had, but the simulation ended in a draw. Another break and another pair of AI controlled ships finished with the same result.

When the number of ships in Harry's corner reached the second dozen he finally admitted that there was something else going on. He argued that it was not making any sense and was not possible that just be experience alone Malinor could continue to evade all of his efforts. And as he asked for an explanation, the following discussion had occurred:

"What you have just witnessed Harry is one of the most important secrets of our race. This phenomenon was first encountered over a million years ago" – explained Malinor, - "by a single Alteran pilot who was protecting a peaceful undeveloped world against overwhelming odds of enemy invaders. He was a Fleet Commander and was utilizing one of the newest and most technologically advanced ships in our possession, but the odds were too great – one ship against hundreds".

With a rapt attention Harry was listening to the story, which happened eons ago in completely different part of the Universe. The Fleet Commander in question has happened to be on a routing exploration mission and discovered a devastated world. It was obvious that the world was destroyed from space and the civilization on the planet in question had no signs of being sufficiently advanced to fight back – not even close. Scanners indicated signs of presence of multiple ships, possibly hundreds – judging from the thoroughness of the planetary bombardment, and a unique trail of faster-then-light drive technology used by the invaders. He had immediately dispatched a message to the Supreme Fleet Commander at the time and followed the trail. After a short jump in hyperspace Fleet Commander came upon another devastated world, although more recent and another trail which he could follow.

Virtual reality simulated both planets in questions, so Harry sat and watched with sickening emotions how the Fleet Commander followed the trail and visited thirty destroyed worlds, thirty destroyed civilizations, thirty wiped out races, before finally catching up to the murderers of untold millions. In the ensuing battle at the orbit of the thirty first world a single Alteran vessel had without any mercy demolished every single enemy ship. Despite of technical impossibility no amount of enemy fire could penetrate the shields, and no enemy shields could withstand the overpowered attacks. So, the entire enemy fleet was destroyed one by one – and the feeling of seeing that happening was somehow very satisfying to Harry.

As the simulation ended, Malinor calmly placed his hand on Harry's shoulder and explained that this day was the first day Alteran people learned to channel their technology with their powers. The connection between the mind of the pilot and the ship was very thorough – the pilot could control every aspect of the vessel, and that made it possible to channel their magical power into the ship weapons and shields, increasing their potential exponentially. The knowledge of the channeling was one of the most guarded secrets of Altera, known to only few individuals and passed down the generations from one Supreme Fleet Commander to another. The potential of abuse was too great after all.

After that Malinor has smiled at Harry and declared that he had hopes for Harry to one day achieve the status of a Supreme Fleet Commander, which is an elite pilot capable of complete physical and magical control of any vessel in Alteran Fleet, and a very respected person amongst Alteran people. That was the moment when Harry realized how completely honest the people of Altera were in the desire to include him as one of their own, because revealing this information to him signified a complete trust. They have trusted in him as in one of their own, they believed in him and he made a decision to give his all to meet their expectations.

At the age of sixteen Harry's physical growth started to slow down considerably, while his magic reached maturity. He has spent a few years working with Arno, Head of Life Department, to ascertain his status and they finally reached the conclusion that physically his age would freeze completely somewhere in the mid-twenties and remain there due to effects of the Philosopher stone. Harry would be capable of manipulating his body to be younger than that at will, but they estimated the youngest age to be sixteen. He could theoretically rewind back to sixteen years old, age to twenty five and either remain there or rewind again.

When Harry expressed a desire to study to become a Healer himself, Arno made him start practicing control of his magic by mimicking the effects of numerous devices. He motivated this hellish exercise by stating that Harry was not a normal Healer, and could expect to find himself in various situations, including the ones where he would only have himself and his magic to rely on. The ability to do everything that would otherwise require a device or tool would come beneficial in such cases and would improve his magical control a lot. With a sigh Harry agreed, knowing his penchant to find himself in otherwise improbable situations, and added the exercise to his growing list of things to do.

The actual exercise of mimicking technology in action turned out to be very interesting, very difficult in the process but quite exciting in result. It combined a lesson on the technology of device in question, where Harry learned in details how the device worked and the science behind the effect, and a lesson on magic. Alteran people did not have their magical powers as focused as Harry's was, him coming from the future and being more in tune with his magical abilities, more evolved so to say. However, what they lacked in relative power and focus they made up in control and ability to channel and apply massive energies. For example, to transfigure one object into another Harry would use his magic, focusing on the intent and helping his magical ability with his imagination of the process, Alterans could control their magic to break the object down to its basic components and re-combine them in the new form and shape on molecular level. The result would be the same, but the method – the method was very different.

* * *

A few decades later Harry was once again standing in front of the Council, deliberating the events leading to this meeting. By that time Alterans have started seeding the galaxy with star gates and initiated terraforming process on several planets with good potential resources. The bases on Dakara and Terra were well-established and overflowing with inhabitants, and as such there was a need for expansion.

The reason why Harry has called up a Council was that he made a proposal to create a technology to facilitate teaching of the young Alterans. All the years he spent learning from the extensive knowledge base have culminated in his first research project proposal – a technology that would allow transfer of the knowledge from one mind to another. The traditional Alteran way of teaching – Sharing – required a heavy dose of magic control, a lot of trust and was pretty exhausting for the teacher. In a master-apprentice scenario it was perfectly acceptable and proven teaching method. In fact, in a usual situation there would be enough masters around to teach any newborn Alteran. However, with their escape from the home galaxy and considering influx of the newborn children in the numerous families, which formed in the passing years, there were too many students to teach and too few masters to teach them all. Harry's proposal was to construct a device capable of safely storing and imprinting the knowledge of the masters to the user of the device. It would obviously require the technological imitation of the magical process of Sharing and was a worthy first research goal to pursue.

The prototype design of the device was being deliberated by the Council. A user could interface with the device with his mind and chose the fragments of knowledge that would be read directly from the brain and stored in a matrix within the device. Obviously, the device relied on the user having an Alteran physiology, or else the brain reading and writing operations could go horribly wrong, so there were safeguards installed that only allowed those with Alteran gene and capable of mind link to access the device. The knowledge stored on the device could afterwards be copied to any other following user, after which a brief session of meditation was required to assimilate the knowledge. Harry had a problem estimating the amount of information one could possibly swallow in one session without losing it or having any negative effects, but he was not a master by a long shot and thus presented the current design for the Council.

Even after so many years of learning, he was still barely scratching the surface of the knowledge that combined Alteran race had accumulated in their ten millions years of evolution. Depending on the decision of the Council and the help of the Life Department masters he estimated he could spend from a few more decades to a few more years to learn everything else – given that the device were approved and finished. It would still be years before he was acknowledged as a master in any of the fields and areas, but he was stubbornly going towards his goal of reaching his full potential.

Besides, he was determined to help out his growing family as much as he could – Gayana and Toren have had twin daughters that were currently three years old, and he simply loved two little mini-suns with all his heart. Harry, being the big cool brother he was, absolutely adored the twins and spoiled them whenever he could. The twins reciprocated the feeling and followed him around like they were attached to him by the ropes, bringing smiles wherever the trio went.

Inglarius, who represented Life Department of the Council at this session, has raised a question about way how the knowledge would be portioned for the user of the device. Life Department had control of the numerous aspects of Alteran life, starting from education, entertainment, arts and going to maintenance of the structures, security, technical support, as well as production of food and other goods – everything except the military, science and health operations. With or without those areas of knowledge everything was still interconnected and there was a need for a clear structure of knowledge users would have to absorb, or a method to absorb everything at once.

Arno has raised another issue, explaining that it was one thing to learn things in small steps with enough time to adjust to the material, and it was another thing to receive a large block of information and be able to immediately process it and use – and there also was a limit on the minimum amount that was to be transferred to the recipient of the device due to the way how the brain stores and accesses the knowledge.

The decision was made to start procedures for creation of repository of knowledge. Everything Alterans knew and learned was to be preserved in form of knowledge packages organized and ready for implantation to the users. For security reasons there were created several different levels of knowledge, as well as role specific implantations – for example, every user would have to receive a common basic package of knowledge, after which military, scientific, health and other areas were available in specialized packages. The Council also deemed it necessary to foresee the situation in the future where the repository would be used to share some knowledge with non-Alterans for whatever purposes and wanted to be able to control what information would be given out. Some of the knowledge was simply too dangerous to share even with the closest allies and needed to be safeguarded.

* * *

Exiting the Council Harry proceeded to teleport to his personal ship above the planet. He had to conduct an exploration mission towards an uncharted region of space, following which the Stargates would be seeded amongst the worlds of that region capable of sustaining life. He willed himself to an energy-like state and transferred to the command center of his ship where he re-built his body into his normal form. He could have done the same by mind-linking with the teleportation device on board the ship and ordering transportation, but he preferred to exercise his magic and train to control it every time he could, if the situation allowed. Connecting with his ship Harry sent a telepathic command and set the navigation computer to calculate the path, speed and travel time towards the required coordinates. After having done so he activated the drives and entered the hyper-space on course to his destination. The travel time estimation was two hours and 40 minutes with the moderate speed he preferred to use, and so he had some time to continue his work on knowledge repository device.

Exactly two hours and 40 minutes later he stopped and saved his progress into the data banks of the ship and activated the long-range sensors right after exiting hyper-space. Here was coming another exercise, part of his very hard training to improve his magical control and mind power. Channeling magic through his ship and utilizing all of the ship's scanning powers to maximum he was bombarded with the data on the surrounding star systems and worlds. Every bit of information – the age of the star, the stability, the energy output, prognosis on the flares and other activities, the composition of the planets, availability of the specific resources, potential for planetary terraforming and much more was gathered. However, instead of simply using powerful computers aboard the ship, Harry proceeded to categorize and store the information with his mind working in collaboration with ships computers. By being part of the process himself his mind and magic were adjusting to the high speed calculations and reasoning involved. Of course, the major part of the work was still performed by the computer core, alone he would not be able to deal with the large volumes of incoming data. Still, little by little his mind adjusted itself and control of the magic was further strengthening.

To his surprise he had discovered a civilization of reptile-looking creatures, which had lived in what clearly looked like settlements of various sizes and had access to the low-power level energy sources. Making a short jump at the full speed in hyper-space Harry arrived to the orbit of the planet in question and started a more detailed scanning of the world. As his scans progressed, on the planet below the reptiles one by one would stop what they were doing and look up into the skies. Inside his ship in orbit Harry suddenly realized that his presence and scanning were detected, although the reptiles have not been able to pinpoint his location due to ship's cloaking abilities. A telepathic message was suddenly broadcasted from the planet's surface, in which the sky traveler was invited to come forth and become friends with the Ngaascshi. Dumbfounded, Harry has initiated a priority level information record in the ship's logs - he had discovered an advanced race. Making a split second decision Harry activated a long range communication and created a link between the ships' computers and the Alteran base on Terra. From that moment forth every action and every piece of information would be recorded and transmitted back to the base. A Council meeting would be probably called to review the information in real time and advise if necessary, while all other stations would re-translate the signal for all Alterans to witness how he would be responding to the invitation and initiating the contact.

The history of the Alteran civilization was vast and rich with events, and along its course they have explored vast regions of Universe and met many civilizations in different stages of development, populated by numerous creatures that possessed enough intelligence that they could be called intelligent life forms. However, being intelligent and having a civilization did not necessarily mean that the species would mature and evolve into a race of beings. Often, Alterans would watch a civilization that had plenty of potential to become a race, only to witness degradation or in some cases extinction. Such was the way of life and Universe. Essentially, every race of beings, disregarding their origin or species, had a unique path of development they could follow and build unique culture and civilization, and it was considered extremely bad practice for an Alteran to contact and influence such a race until they have reached their maturity, because more than anything Alterans valued freedom, and being a very advanced civilization any intervention on their part no matter how small could be seen as something divine or godly, and irreversibly change the course of development of the race. And while Alterans were certainly advanced, they were no gods and did not want to have such level of power over less advanced species, and neither they wanted to have it on their conscience that because of their actions, because of some seemingly good intervention a civilization could degrade or even become extinct.

From the experience Alterans have determined that a race of beings could only start to acquire certain extra-sensory abilities, if they have passed a certain level of development and reached a certain level of understanding of the Universe, as it was in essence a manipulation of Universe, an imposition of one's will to control the fundamental powers that comprised the reality. Every such a race had unique civilization, culture and history and Alterans were always happy to establish friendly relationship, share their own history and culture, along with learning the history and culture of their partners. Sadly, as they progressed in their history Alterans met very few civilizations, which have passed the stage of Formation, the last of those being the Alfars, and after the tragic end of their planet a discovery of a new advanced civilization was a monumental event, a reason for celebration. A telepathic broadcast into the space surrounding the planet, capability of sensing the ship's presence despite its cloaking abilities, understanding that they are being scanned and immediate response in form of invitation for contact - those were definitely signs of a race that was highly advanced. It was considered important to establish a contact with such a race, and form a friendly relationship, an alliance.

Having teleported down the planet surface towards the destination provided in the broadcast Harry had encountered the first Ngaascshi in his life. The being was a tall creature of reptilian origins, obviously in a great physical form as demonstrated by a well-developed musculature. Ngaascshi had leather clothes richly decorated with gold, which Harry assumed were the signs of his high social standing amongst his people. For several moments both Harry and Ngaascshi were studying each other with a great interest. Then the eyes of the Ngaascshi started to glow in golden light and Harry felt a telepathic greeting. Harry immediately replied with his own telepathy, forwarding a brief greeting and wishes for well-being and friendship. Tentatively, he also communicated desire to learn more about Ngaascshi. The eyes of Ngaascshi glowed again and the answer came in a form of series of images of the corridors of the building ending in another richly decorated room and a table where there were plates of what looked like cooked fish. Smiling, Harry followed the host towards the room.

When the pair reached their destination they have settled around the round stone with a black smooth surface. In the small silence which reigned after they were seated Harry mentally reviewed his plan of further actions. Ngaascshi have probably guessed there was some kind of dilemma as he broke the silence by waving his hand and to Harry's surprise series of symbols lighted up in a sequence. He then pressed one of the symbols and a plate with some kind of fishes appeared from the thin air. Magic! Having tight control of his own powers Harry could not help but sense that the appearance of the dish had been the result of the magical transportation. This was an unexpected, but a welcome surprise, so Harry smiled and also waved his hand, pulling on his magic to conjure a replica of one of the small tridents, which he noticed and assumed that they were utilized to eat the fish. Ngaascshi took the conjured trident, studied it briefly with his glowing eyes and nodded to Harry. It appeared that the first contact was progressing well, and both sides have made a satisfactory assessment of each other.

* * *

The name of the race, Ngaascshi, has been communicated telepathically, as it was not possible to pronounce nor the hissing reptilian under tones of "scshi", and neither the strange guttural sound of "Nga" using the human throat. The closest Harry was able to imitate was Nag'A'Shi, and it seemed that the creature has found it satisfactory enough. Their race was much younger than Alteran, only a few dozen thousands years. However, it turned out that their advanced stage of development was easily explained by their capability to impart their knowledge to the next generations when giving birth, and as such each individual Nag'A'Shi had the memories of everyone in their bloodline before them. The accumulative knowledge and wisdom of their civilization was indeed great, as each generation would start where the previous stopped and continue their work. Due to their memories there were only a few wars in their history, and after they passed there were no more. Technologically, Nag'A'Shi did not advance a lot, as they have payed much more attention to the development of their unique magical language - the runes. As far as Alterans were concerned this was the first time they have encountered a civilization that was using the magic in this unique way. Magic was a special ability after all to apply one's understanding of the Universe's fundamental forces and control of them to achieve the desired effect. A rune was a construct of magic, which had a specific purpose and effect. From what Harry managed to understand Nag'A'Shi have been developing this language for as long as they remembered, having started with simple basic constructs that required massive amounts of energy to achieve very small effects, and gradually improving and creating more and more complex structures until it formed into what it was now - a complex language, where they could use a combination of runes and achieve pretty much everything they needed.

Nag'A'Shi did not acquire any space travel capabilities, because they were simply content with remaining on their own planet. They did however study the space surrounding their planet using the artifacts, which were created and empowered by the runes. In particular, they have demonstrated a viewing basin capable of showing the images from the distant planets - it was mainly used to study some plant and animal life cycle, in order to better understand the nature. The architecture of the city was very interesting to see, as there was a large tendency for golden insertions on the walls, which were showing various pictures. It was very different to the architecture of the Alterans, and so Harry found himself wondering around the city, viewing and recording the walls. Arrival of a traveler from the distant stars spiked a lot of interest among the reptilians, and Harry was feeling a little uncomfortable due to all the attention he was getting, as well as the telepathic chatter that raised wherever he went. After the initial meeting at which there was a lengthy telepathic discussion between Harry and the leader of Nag'A'Shi, they have managed to agree to the terms of a establishing an alliance. The Alterans were quite interested in learning of the runes and their applications, as well as creation of rune-empowered artifacts, while Nag'A'Shi wished to know more about the technology, the Universe and perhaps the space flight. In a short time a group of Alterans would arrive to settle an embassy of sorts, in which all further negotiations and sharing of knowledge would be conducted, and overall it looked like it was a start of a beautiful friendship. As the first Alteran to establish contact Harry was going to be spending quite a lot of time amongst their new friends, both learning from them and teaching them in exchange. He was quite fascinated by the opportunities presented by the discovery of the runes and their potential in improving the efficiency of any device they were used on.

One of the first devices that would utilize the newly learned runes would be his repository of knowledge. He was certain that with the application of runes the device would finally be able to pass all of the safety protocols and become operational. He already had multiple ideas for either discovering if Nag'A'Shi had already developed runes that facilitated learning, improved memory and recall of information, and if not - he was eager to repeat the whole process of creation of the rune, by starting with basics and improving over time and finally creating a new set of runes that would answer to his requirements. With the device ready and operational Alterans would be able to greatly increase their numbers and expand into numerous colonies and outposts, as they would no longer be limited by the availability of the masters to teach and impart knowledge on the students. Other than that, Harry also had an interesting idea to create runes that would increase the shields and weapons power, or maybe even improve the connection between the ship and Fleet Commander while Channeling. There were many interesting ideas to consider and he certainly looked forward to it.


End file.
